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Thursday, February 21, 2013

Pushed through yesterday afternoon to get both the outer borders on this quilt. I already have a quilting pattern in my brain, so I might get started on quilting this soon. It is about 80" square.Here is an all-over shot and 2 close-ups:

My plan here was to 1. use selvages. 2. use up a bunch of the bright blue fabric (which the back will be made from as well). 3. make a rainbow theme (please tell me you noticed the stars are red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet diagonally).

Wednesday, February 20, 2013

A decorator I am not. But I wannabe!! Those of you who have been patiently reading along have seen the lovely quilted pillow shams I've made for my everyday bedding and my Christmas quilt. Well, I thought it would look better with a red rectangular pillow in front of the shams. This is not exactly the look I wanted, but it's close enough for now. I thought it would be taller. It is a plump little pillow, not too much unlike a sausage!Without and with:

The two quilts I'd use it with have different reds, so I decided (after much contemplation) to make a top using many different reds. The dark chunk on the right side stands out too much (not as much in person as in the picture), but it's good for now. When my teenage daughter came in my room and said "love the new pillow", I figured finished is good!

These little blocks are paper pieced. Last night I had an epiphany about them. I don't like paper piecing because I hate to waste even the tiniest bits of fabric. I don't like digging around to see what size piece best fits the place that I need a scrap of fabric to fit!So last night before I took my daughter to karate, I cut plastic templates for the 3 sizes of pieces in this block. I took my scrap box and cut cut cut the whole 75 minutes I was there. I got nearly all the box tamed! So now I'm going to add to it a handful at a time from my color boxes (only the smallest pieces). I made it easy peasy. I used Ziploc sandwich bag with the piece written in large letters on the outside. I cut the biggest template I could out of each chunk of fabric. Now when I sew, I will know which bag to look in. I don't have a goal for how these blocks are used. I am just going to keep making them. I drew the pattern myself. They are 4" square unfinished. Soooo cute in person! Mostly Thimbleberries, but a smackerel of shirts and oddballs that sneaked in there somehow!

Yesterday I received a squishy envelope from my b-friend at the Country Log Cabin. She hadn't told me she was sending me anything, so that just increased the anticipation. You know when you get an unexpected envelope from a blogging friend, it has to be good, right?

It was full of selvages (with lots of the fabric showing!). How did she know I was working on these for my dear daughter in Wisconsin? There are 6 rows total. The leftmost row is folded under to make it fit on the design wall. The 3 rows on the right are just lying there, waiting to be joined to the mother ship.